Guantánamo: US government releases eleven more prisoners

The outgoing US government has released eleven more prisoners from its controversial Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba and transferred them to Oman. The US Department of Defense said those released were men from Yemen. According to US media, the men were imprisoned without charges for more than two decades. After their release, there are still 15 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, three of whom would be eligible for transfer, it said.

As early as September 2023, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin informed Congress of his intention to support the transfer of the prisoners to Oman after a rigorous review, the Pentagon said. No information was given about the circumstances of the transfer. Only two of the men still in prison were convicted by military commissions.

Congress has banned the administration from moving Guantánamo detainees to the mainland United States and has blocked returns to certain countries, including Yemen. Yemen has been destabilized by years of conflict and transferring prisoners there could pose a security risk, officials are quoted as saying by the Washington Post. The neighboring country of Oman has already taken in several dozen ex-prisoners.

It was only on New Year’s Eve that the Pentagon announced that after almost 23 years of imprisonment, Ridah Bin Salih al-Jasidi, one of the first inmates of the US prison camp, had been transferred to his home country of Tunisia. He had been held there since the detention center opened in January 2002 and was never charged with a crime.

The prison camp is located in Cuba at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay. At one point, almost 800 people were imprisoned there. The camp was set up after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA under President George W. Bush to hold suspected Islamist terrorists without trial. Human rights groups have long called for the closure. The vast majority of detainees have never been charged and have not been proven to have any connection to the September 11 attacks.

The outgoing US President Joe Biden set the closure as a goal at the beginning of his term in office. However, the plan failed because of the US Congress. Bush’s Democratic successor Barack Obama already wanted the camp to end. The Republican Donald Trump, in turn, advocated keeping the camp open.